Losses at Vodafone Idea (Vi) widened for the quarter ended September 30 amid flat revenues.

The telco posted a consolidated loss of Rs 8,738 crore compared with a loss of Rs 7,596 crore in the same period of the previous year. For the quarter ended June 30 its losses had stood at Rs 7,940 crore.

The increased losses came as revenues stood at Rs 10,716 crore compared with Rs 10,615 crore in the year-ago quarter.
However, expenses remained elevated at Rs 18,670 crore against Rs 18,302 crore in the year-ago period.

Average revenue per user (Arpu) improved to Rs 142, a rise of 2.1 per cent sequentially against Rs 139, primarily aided by the migration of subscribers to higher Arpu plans.

The company added that it continues to see high data usage per broadband customer at 15.8 GB per month with the total data traffic for the quarter witnessing a sequential growth of 2 per cent.

During the quarter, its subscriber base stood at 219.8 million compared with 221.4 million in the April-June period and 234.4 million in the year-ago period.

The company pointed out that the 4G subscriber base continued to grow for the ninth successive quarter and stood at 124.7 million against 122.9 million in the first quarter of this fiscal, an addition of 1.8 million subscribers.

Vi added that with improving operations, it saw the lowest quarterly subscriber decline of 1.6 million since the merger. On its debt position, Vi said the total gross debt as of September 30 stood at Rs 2,12,780 crore comprising deferred spectrum payment obligations of Rs 1,35,130 crore and AGR liability of Rs 68,180 crore that are due to the government.

The debt from banks and financial institutions stood at Rs 7,860 crore apart from Rs 1,610 crore from optionally convertible debentures.